These are such small things. Such lit­tle vic­to­ries. What right have I to cel­e­brate them?

The same right I have to cel­e­brate the vic­to­ries of all of my friends and fam­i­ly who deal with chron­ic ill­ness­es, phys­i­cal and men­tal. Small vic­to­ries are vic­to­ries. Med­ica­tion that allows me to escape the nev­er-end­ing cycle of pan­ic is use­ful. Wrap­ping myself in soft, warm cloth is calm­ing and sooth­ing. Touch­ing my skin and putting make­up on with gen­tle, lov­ing hands is cru­cial on days where I strug­gle to love myself. Such a short amount of time of my day, and yet now I am calm. I can think. I am okay.

I do a lot of cus­tom typog­ra­phy and let­ter­ing in my graph­ic design and per­son­al cal­lig­ra­phy work. I aspire to cre­ate vec­tor images that are clean, crisp, and intu­itive­ly drawn so as to make the job eas­i­er for the next design­er who has to touch my work. As I con­tin­ue to read and watch tuto­ri­als from…

It’s easy for us, the white chil­dren of the Col­or­blind Gen­er­a­tion, to con­tin­ue to focus on indi­vid­ual prej­u­dice while deny­ing sys­temic oppres­sion. It’s how we were raised. It’s how we were taught. Sure­ly, we are inno­cent. Sure­ly, we don’t ben­e­fit from white suprema­cy. Sure­ly, we don’t per­pet­u­ate it.

And yet, white suprema­cy is alive and thriv­ing in Amer­i­ca today. It exists as a sys­tem, per­haps even more than as a skin col­or. It rewards not only those who work to sup­port the sys­tem, but also those who do noth­ing to impede it. Those who sit silent­ly in the face of oppres­sion. Those who step up and affirm the sys­tem that oppress­es them. Those who don’t even think to ques­tion the sto­ries we’re told about white­ness, black­ness, and our place in the world.

White suprema­cy cre­ates an envi­ron­ment where gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion are unin­formed about the vio­lence it takes to main­tain their safe­ty, then rewards them for nev­er ques­tion­ing what they’re told.

White suprema­cy cre­at­ed the envi­ron­ment that allowed me to reach the age of 21 with­out ever ques­tion­ing it. For decades, I did noth­ing to try to stop it.

I’ve start­ed a new cal­lig­ra­phy and illus­tra­tion series called “Game Over,” in which I cal­li­graph and illus­trate icon­ic death and game over screens from var­i­ous video games. I have two fin­ished right now, and am work­ing on sev­er­al oth­ers. I’ll be sell­ing the orig­i­nals on Etsy once the series is com­plete, and sell­ing prints on…

At long last, I’ve been able to record and pro­duce anoth­er episode for Self-Care Artist! Self-Care Artist is an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion about body pos­i­tiv­i­ty, make-up, men­tal health, social issues, and self-care in gen­er­al. I hope you enjoy! Please sub­scribe and com­ment if you like it, and let me know what you’d like me to talk…

This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Ply­mouth Brethren Dropout on May 26, 2014. An updat­ed ver­sion appears below. It’s been just over a year since the tragedy at Isla Vista that prompt­ed the orig­i­nal pen­ning of this post. So many things have hap­pened since then that illus­trate the points made here­in, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: the large­ly…

My clear ret­i­cence for social inter­ac­tion didn’t mat­ter. My body lan­guage regard­ing my pen­cil didn’t mat­ter (con­sid­er­ing he lit­er­al­ly pried it from my hand). My dis­in­ter­est in stroking his ego was the high­est affront, to which he respond­ed by touch­ing me with­out my con­sent (and pro­long­ing his touch when I phys­i­cal­ly pulled away).

Peo­ple. Don’t do this. It’s super not okay. Respect per­son­al bub­bles. Don’t force peo­ple to inter­act with you when they’re giv­ing every indi­ca­tion that they’d real­ly rather not. And don’t take their stuff while they’re using it — that’s kinder­garten lev­el stuff. ANDDON’T TOUCHANYONEWITHOUTTHEIRCONSENTFORTHELOVEOFALLTHATISGOODINTHISWORLD.

There had always been a dis­con­nect between what I was taught and what I observed and expe­ri­enced, between blind faith in invis­i­ble things and repeat­ably testable evi­dence. But as a child, as a teen, even into ear­ly adult­hood, I wasn’t giv­en the words to rec­og­nize the dis­con­nect, or even the tools to inspect or decon­struct my beliefs to see if there was any mer­it to them out­side of want­i­ng them to be true.

A Few Notes

Everything written here is my opinion, not endorsed by any employer or person professionally or personally affiliated with me. Basically, I’m responsible for the content here — no one else is. Come to me if you need to talk about it.

Along those lines, all displayed artwork & materials are my intellectual property unless otherwise stated. That’s why you have to ask permission before using any of my work. If you’re using it editorially, ask permission, then cite and credit me for my work.

Don’t steal my stuff. As a freelance designer & artist (and part-time adjunct teaching), I absolutely depend on the income I earn through my work. If you like something, buy it. If you want me to teach you how to do it, hire me.